Each player starts on Earth or moon with some amount of base materials. So he can build a few small structures.

He has to research a little bit to eventually discover the technology of a matter converter. He already finds the screws and other things needed for assembly among the start things he got. He assembles his first matter converter. Now he can mine for more materials, and convert them to valuable rare composite materials., or if he can' t find base materials, to reproduce some amount of them.

This way, he can stockpile more and more resources, in order to build bigger and bigger structures (buildings, factories, spaceships), or to construct special machines needed for more speed, or better mining, better long-range recognition, and so on.